“Your share’s twenty-two hundred,” she said. “I have it in the safe out in the office. You want it?”
“Hold on to it,” he said. “Take my bill out of it when I leave.”
“Okay, fine,” she said.
It was good to have stashes in safe places here and there around the country. You never knew when you might need it. A Claire wasn’t always available, sitting on your case money a telegram away.
But it was stupid to have forgotten the money here. Parker remembered how that had happened; the jewelry had been an afterthought, an unexpected side result of him and Handy going up to Buffalo after a man named Bronson, a wheel in a gambling syndicate that called itself the Outfit. Bronson had put a contract out on Parker because of some trouble there’d been, and Parker made some more trouble, and Bronson’s successor decided to let the contract lapse. In all of that, the handful of jewelry Handy had found in Bronson’s safe got itself forgotten.
But this is where they’d come after they’d finished with Bronson, and they’d given Madge the jewelry to unload for them, and here she was four years later with twenty-two hundred bucks out of nowhere.
She said, “What about Handy? Think I should send it to him?”
“He’s supposed to call me in a little while. I’ll ask him.”
“He retired, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
She waited and then said, “Say something, Parker. God, to get you to gossip it’s like pulling teeth.”
“Handy retired,” Parker said.
“I know he retired! Tell me about it. Tell me why he retired, tell me where he is, how’s he doing. Talk to me, Parker, Goddammit.”
So Parker talked to her, telling her about Handy, running a diner now up in Presque Isle, Maine. She listened for a while, but she could never go very long without doing her own talking, so soon enough she interrupted him to tell him about somebody else she knew who’d retired seven different times in a space of twenty years, and Parker went back to his own silence again, not listening, waiting for the phone.
It rang half an hour later. Madge said, “You want me to leave?”
“It don’t matter, stick around.” He went over and picked up the phone and said hello.
Madge said, “Is it Handy?”
It wasn’t. Parker shook his head at her and said into the phone, “How’d we do?”
“Bad A couple of guys heard of Uhl, but I couldn’t find anybody who worked with him or knew how to get in touch with him. Matt Rosenstein drew a fat blank. Listen, I don’t know what you want these two for, but if it’s work a couple of other boys are interested.”
“It’s a special situation,” Parker said.
“Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you out.”
I “That’s okay.” Parker hung up and went back and sat down.
Madge said, “You looking for information?”
“Yes.”
“I’m the girl to ask, Parker. Try me.”
“George Uhl.”
Her expectant look faded slowly. “Uhl? George Uhl? He must be new.”
“Pretty new. He’s worked six times, he said. He said one time he worked with Matt Rosenstein. The way he said it, Rosenstein should be hot stuff, but I never heard of him.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” she said. “Matt Rosenstein, I know him. You wouldn’t ever cross his path. You two have different kinds of outlooks.”
“Tell me about him,” Parker said.
“He’s a scavenger bird,” she said. “He pulls things nobody else wants. He’s done a couple of kidnappings, he was a whiskey hijacker along the Canadian border for a while, he’s been all over.”
“He doesn’t do the big hits?”
“Oh, them too,” she said. “With a pretty respectable string sometimes, too. He’ll work any racket he comes across, so a few times it’s been your sort of thing. But he’s too wild; a lot of smart ones won’t work with him. I’ve heard it said he’s a snowbird, but I don’t think he’s on anything. He’s just one of those naturally wild ones. If this George Uhl thinks Matt Rosenstein is hot stuff, it tells you a lot about George Uhl. Like you probably shouldn’t work with him.”
“Too late to tell me that,” Parker said. “He came recommended by Benny Weiss.”
“Benny’s okay,” she said and shrugged. “But anybody can make a mistake.”
“Where do I find Rosenstein, do you know?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, I don’t. I know who he is. He’s been here once or twice with a bunch, but I wouldn’t know how to reach him or even who would know how.”
“That’s what — “
The phone sounded again. Parker broke off what he was saying and went over to answer it, and this time it was Handy McKay. He nodded at Madge and said to Handy, “Get anywhere?”
“Not on Uhl. He’s too new, I guess. But I found out about Matt Rosenstein.”
“Where he is?”
“He’s like you,” Handy said. “You don’t contact him direct. Just like people with a message for you come to me, people with a message for Rosenstein go to somebody else.”
“Who?”
“A guy named Brock, in New York. Paul Brock. He runs a record store there.”
“Hold on while I get a pencil.”
Madge was already on her feet. “I’ll get it.”
She got him pencil and paper, and Parker put down Brock’s name and address. Madge whispered, “Tell him about the money,” and Parker nodded.
Handy said, “That’s all I could get.”
“That’s fine,” Parker said. “Madge says she’s got twenty-two hundred bucks belongs to you. Remember those jewels we took away from Bronson that time?”
“Christ, yes! I forget about that.”
“She wants to know should she send you the money or hold it for you.”
“Send it.”
Parker was surprised. “You don’t want it stashed?”
“What do I want it stashed for? I’m not going anyplace. I run a diner now, Parker. That’s what I do.”
“Okay,” Parker said. “I’ll tell her. And thanks for the stuff on Rosenstein.”
“Any time.”
Parker hung up and told Madge she was to send the money and gave her Handy’s address. Then the phone rang again and it was the third man Parker had called, and he had the Brock name too but nothing else. Parker thanked him for it and hung up and said to Madge, “I’ll be going in the morning.”
“You’re after this boy Uhl,” she said.
“Have Ethel call me at eight,” Parker said.
“You always were gabby,” she said, and emptied her glass. She got to her feet. “That’s always been your big failing, Parker,” she said. “You talk too much.”
Parker locked the door after her and switched off the light. In the morning he left for New York.
Two
With enough volume to drown out a sonic boom, the loudspeaker over the doorway blared out the voices of a rock quartet declaiming the end of civilization as we know it. Album jackets hung turning from wires in the tall, narrow window beside the entrance. Rain streaked the window, further distorting the distorted photographs on the jackets.
Parker had left the car around the corner on Sixth Avenue. Discodelia, Brock’s record shop, was on Blecker Street in Greenwich Village on one of the tourist blocks. Parker walked up the block in the rain and he was the only one on the sidewalk. It was late morning, too early for tourists, and a weekday. And it was raining.
He turned and went in through the open doorway under the yowling speaker. Because the sound was aimed outward, away from the shop, it was quieter inside, almost cosy.
It was a long, narrow room with a yellow floor and ceiling. A high counter and a cash register and a glum male cashier were just to the left of the entrance, and beyond that both side walls were lined with record bins. The rear wall was a montage of posters, newspaper clippings, publicity photos, and pages from old comic books. More album jackets filled the upper half of both side walls above the record bins. More records were stored underneath the bins. Three boys of about twenty were scattered through the store, flipping through the records in the bins.